


Scorekeeping

by mychemicalliferuiner



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: BAMF Morty, Hand & Finger Kink, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by basically everyone else who writes in this fandom, M/M, Protective Rick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-02-01 12:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12705243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mychemicalliferuiner/pseuds/mychemicalliferuiner
Summary: On a good day, Rick liked to think that they broke even. On a bad day he hoped that they someday could. Someone has figured out the nature of Morty's brainwaves. No one is safe.





	1. Chapter 1

Day Zero

The moment Morty’s eyes fall shut, Rick does what he does best; he takes the horror, the fear, the panic, the love, god, because there's so, so much love, and shoves them way, way down, away from whatever chemicals drive his central nervous system, and with steady hands activates the time stop device, mentally cataloging and ranking the facts, even as his hands move over the boy's body, cauterizing the critical wounds with a small tool.

At the time of the freeze, Morty’s heartbeat had been a thready 132 and rising, his system trying to compensate for the lost volume of blood. Cool, clammy skin due to vasoconstriction, rapid, shallow breathing due to sympathetic nervous system stimulation and acidosis. Cold, mottled skin, _Livedo Reticularis_ , some unhelpful part of his mind supplied, due to insufficient perfusion of blood to the skin.  
Morty was going into shock-- _if I'd been even minutes later_ \--that thought goes with it's predecessors, repressed with ruthless will.

Setting the universe in motion again, he slaps Morty, hard, wincing at the red welt it leaves, but relieved at the flicker of eyelids it garners.  
“Don't fucking do that.” He snarls, pulling roughly on the kid's hair. “Keep your eyes open. Stay awake, okay, stay with me.”  
A gold brown iris flickers towards him, baleful. Morty is still in there, if only just.  
“M tired,” Morty mumbles wetly, a pale pink foam gathering in the corners of his mouth. His tongue sluggishly swipes at it.  
“I know, baby, you have to stay awake though. Don't sleep, okay? Not yet, Cmon, stay with me, okay?” He's just repeating the same things over and over, running on full-auto.  
He's got the bleeding under control, but Morty's lost so, so much blood already, coloring the air with its coppery scent. It pools around them, soaking his clothes in hot smears everywhere their bodies touch.  
He fires the portal gun, and steps into the void, Morty's slim form gathered up and held too easily in his arms.  
They arrive in a hospital emergency room, and he gives Morty over, and his heart aches when Morty's hand slides weakly down his shoulder, his arm, trying to stay in contact with Rick as he's pulled away on a stretcher, while Rick remains motionless, standing alone in the center of a waiting room that buzzes around him, currents unstopped by his presence.


	2. Chapter 2

Day 1  
There were a lot of things Morty wanted to forget about the last two days. Most of it really. Mercifully, his brain seemed to have blocked off the worst parts into a vague, blurry mash of images and sensations, wet noises, screaming. 

The part that he doesn't want to forget is hypercolor clear, textured more deeply, more richly than almost any other memory he has. He lets it play over and over in his mind, stop, rewind, play, as he drifts in and out of levels of consciousness that might correlate to something in the real world or might not.

Rick looks at him, eyes burning, haloed in pale sunlight and the glowing embers that remained of the planet. Ricks brand of destruction was usually chaos and fire, blazing guns and a rain of missile fire. 

This, this was different, something he'd never seen before but tacitly knew to be Rick’s work.

The city had been crushed to dust and ash, transforming it into a silty desert that went on for miles. Clean, neat, precise complete annihilation. The building he was in, neatly sliced, as though a giant dollhouse. Morty meets Rick's eyes and smiles.

The love of a man who created universes in an afternoon, could destroy them just as easily was no small thing. Morty was his muse, his raison d'etre, his name written in blood a thousand times, in a thousand different timelines. He held Morty up, deifying, obsessive and singular, in supplication, like morty was his last chance to make good. It was a madman's love and it should be terrifying, but Morty holds it close, wraps it around him like warm blankets. No one else will ever have Rick the way he does.

“You saved me,” Morty manages to whisper. Rick drops his pistol to the floor, set into motion by his words. If Rick is a ten ton explosive, Morty is the detonator. Neither is much of anything at all, not without the other.

Ricks hands frame his face, thumbs sweeping the raw tear-burned skin of his cheekbones.   
“I-I will watch this entire galaxy burn to get you back. No one, no one compares to you.” His expression is jagged, and Morty cuts himself wide open on his sharp edges. They're bleeding out together, in this half destroyed warehouse, a thousand light years from home.

Ricks hands leave his face and Morty feels it like a gaping loss, making a small anguished noise as the scientist’s hands move frantically up and down, skimming his sides, his arms. His lips are pressed into a grim line.

Morty knows why. He's been taken apart, skewered, butchered, flayed open. His scalp is bare, hair shaved away and replaced with a multitude of implanted wires that wind up, up, into the ceiling, broadcasting his data to some unknown point in the universe. He's the unwilling betrayer of the one person he loves most, and the guilt burns hot in his throat. He can't feel Rick's touch anymore, even as he probes his open wounds. Sluggishly observing Rick's movements with detached interest as he tries to salvage what was left of him.

He'd been drugged with something, they had explained, so that he wouldn't go into shock right away, so that they could continue sticking knives and needles into him, inflicting damage on his nervous system. It's wearing off though, or maybe they'd lied. He can feel the warm staticky darkness edge in, taking his senses one by one.

Morty blinks, and then he’s awake.


	3. Chapter 3

His body jolts, hard, a bit like it does sometimes when he's on the edge of sleep. A hypnic jerk, Rick had explained, once, worlds ago, laughing at Morty’s dazed expression.

Rick isn't laughing now. His eyes are piercing and serious, flicking from point to point on Morty’s face.  
“Sh, shit, Morty. It's okay, you're gonna be fine, it's all over with.”  
“Rick?”  
“Yeah, b-babe. I'm here, I've got you.” The lizard brain, base-instincts part of him eases, and he falls back against the pillows.  
“Hold me?”  
“‘C-course babe, hang on.” Rick arranges the various tubes and wires, then carefully curls into the space between the bed rail and Morty, gathering the kid into his arms. Morty hums a quiet sigh and fits his face into the crook of Rick’s neck. He can feel his voice rumble through both their bones when he speaks, quiet and tight.

“Y-you lost so much blood, Morty. I-I-I thought you were gonna-- you gave me such a scare, kid.” He hears the sound of his flask pop open, the muted splash of liquid, and closed again, a cadence of sound as familiar to him as the opening notes to his favorite song.  
“Msorry, Rick.” Morty mumbles, needing to get the words out before he falls back to sleep. “Shoulda been quicker. F-fuckers got me with gas. I didn't didn't tell them anything, but they got whatever's in my head, the, the, thing that keeps you safe.”  
“It doesn't matter. I've got you back, that's everything, okay, babe? Nothing else comes close. Just rest, I've got you.”  
“don't leave, okay?” He hates how small his voice sounds, many years shy of the twenty-two years he actually is.  
“Of course not, lo prometo, hermoso.” Rick takes a sip from his flask and settles in to keep watch, the tiny tv mounted in the corner fuzzily plays some kind of alien soap opera; that and the soft sound of Morty’s breathing lulls him into that halfway place between sleeping and waking. There are troubling things on the event horizon, but right now, his most pressing need is to make sure that Morty doesn't leave his sight.


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks to the honestly, shit ton of drugs and hours of surgery, Morty checks out of the hospital less than 24 earth hours after getting rescued by Rick. He's still a little weak and banged up, but mostly in one piece. They haven't talked about what had happened yet. Eventually, they're going to have to have that conversation, but right now neither of them are ready to bring it up.

 

Rick is hovering anxiously while the nurse pushes Morty out in a hoverchair, trying to look disinterested while simultaneously glaring and muttering every time she is anything less than gentle with him.

 

When they make it back to the apartment, Rick kicks the door open, gun drawn, holding Morty behind him as he makes his way through the rooms. Once he determines there's no one waiting to ambush them, he relaxes, turning to Morty.

“Alright. I'm going to re-arm the security system. You get settled in bed, okay? I'll be back in just a second.”

Morty nods silently, looking nervously toward the window. Only when he can see the faint glow of the laser grid come on does he finally relax, curling up in their cozy double bed, back defensively to the wall, hand tucked into the crack between the headboard and the wall. Rick had taped a laser pistol to the slats there, and the cool plastic against his fingertips spells protection, lets him feel safe enough to sleep.

 

They muddle through the next few days like that, tensely caught in orbit with one another, always aware of the exits, ears trained for the slightest sound. Morty is twitchy as fuck, hand constantly going to the small of his back where his holster usually is. His gun is gone though, exploded in the attack that had landed him in that nightmare lab.

 

Losing the gun stings more than a little, it had been his eighteenth birthday present from Rick, specially made for him by the man when he’d become Rick’s assistant full-time. It had been fuck-you neon yellow with little hot pink lightning bolts on the side, the words  _Killer Queen_ printed boldly on the slide. Morty had  _loved_ it. It had ended up saving their lives countless times, not jamming up or overheating like the old second hand guns he’s always used. It came with a bunch of useful extra features, among which was the self destruct sequence.  _Hearing Rick’s instructions in his head, he moved the slider from ‘kill’, past ‘injure’ and ‘stun’ and to ‘overload’, twisting the button 90 degrees and snapping it off, tossing the laser pistol toward the incoming enemies. But by then the hiss of gas was already growing louder, and his vision doubled as he took cover._

_\--_

Day five, or rather night five, brings its own set of challenges.

“I gotta put a new, gotta put another tracking chip in you. That's why they took your pinky, they, they knew it was in there. They sent it to me as a message, Morty. In a fucking jewelry case. Never been so mad in my life, Morty.” His hand unconsciously tightens  _hard_ on Morty’s hip and Rick startles at the whimper it causes. He releases his grip and pets softly at Morty's side in silent apology. He's still full of tender places, emotionally and physically, where Rick has to tread lightly.

 

It had been days earlier, and they'd been lying in bed, Rick relearning the new contours, new textures of Morty’s healing body, still swollen in some places, and in the case of a deep gouge in his chest and his right pinky, missing entirely in others. He examines the neatly sealed skin of his amputated pinky, thumb brushing over the raised line where the skin had been re-closed.

“I can grow you a new one? Build you a new one, even. Titanium, diamond, whatever you want.” His mind supplies interesting schematics and possibilities.

“Nah, l-leave it,” he laughs, “Unless--” he stops, face falling.

“Unless?” Rick prompts, when the silence stretches on long enough to imply that Morty isn't going to finish the thought without prodding.

“Nothing.” He says, rolling over and pressing a hard kiss to Rick's jaw, eyes a little flinty.

“Hey, cmon, kid. I'm almost sixty, you can't distract me with a little kissing.” Morty freezes, and Rick can feel the fight leave his body. Morty sighs and sits up, leaning against the wall, looking out the window. The city is quiet tonight, their little earth apartment over the corner bar looked out over the harbor, where the shipyard lights and the moon cast soft lights on Morty's face, outlining his profile, dipping soft fingers of light into the indent of the nearly imperceptible scar on his bare shoulder.

Rick had been the one to press the knife into his skin that time, convinced that he was trapped in a simulation. It was an old memory, and an old scar.

 

There were layers to their relationship; a deep, raw ugly.  A terrifying, commanding beauty. On a good day, Rick liked to think that they broke even. On a bad day he hoped that they someday could.

 

He waits for Morty to speak, watching him clumsily lift the glass of water on the bedside and swallow the remains.

“I, y-you, you always said you liked my hands…” He says, finally, inflection somewhere between a question and a statement. It hangs unfinished almost, and he huffs in frustration, scrubbing his hand through his regrowing hair, willing all the genius gears in Rick's brain to put all the pieces together for him so that he doesn't have to open his wounds, let them spill out his insecurities into the tense space between them. Rick catches up.

 

 _Oh, oh, Morty_ , he thinks, chest caving in.

 

Yeah, he did have a thing for Morty’s hands, praised, worshipped them. He had, fuck, he  _has_ gorgeous hands, long, slender fingers, narrow at the wrist with a prominent wristbone, delicate violet veins and tendons that sit beneath his near-translucent skin. They'd been largely unscarred, almost flawless, until this latest disaster. Ricks mind unhelpfully supplies the images that had been burned into his mind.

 

_Morty, carefully pinned with a stiletto knife through his left wrist to the wooden table, like a butterfly in some nightmare collection. His right hand, besides the amputated pinky, had been painted with corrosive substances, then sloppily healed, then painted again, repeating the process until his hand was a horrifying crab clawed mess of scar tissue, tight and pink-shiny, frozen by the shorter, tighter limits of the new tissue._

 

The surgeons had to basically strip him down to the muscle, cutting away the layers of scar tissue so that he'd be able to regain movement. It left a spiderweb of ropy tissue on the back of his hand, skin an impressive rainbow of color, swollen yellows, angry purple-red ridges and smooth, fat pink keloid patches.

 

“Fuck,” he bites out, wrapping the kid in his arms, wincing at how thin he still feels. “No, Morty, no, you're, fuck, you’re beautiful— still,  _always_.” Rick sighs shakily into Morty's mouth, pressing kiss after kiss to his lips, his temple, his jaw, and then last, gently takes Morty's gorgeous, different hands and commits their new topography to his memory, with his lips and tongue and his own unsteady fingers. He watches Morty’s posture gradually relax, a single tear gathering at the corner of an eye; watches an indefinable  _something_ fall away, something like relief relaxing the lines of his shoulders, his head tipping back against the wall. 

 

Rick chalks one up for their good column.


End file.
